DATA · RESEARCH
The RTO mandate is a lab experiment with no control group. Here are the receipts.
Companies keep ordering workers back to the office on vibes. The numbers below are not vibes: badge swipes, randomized trials, and executives saying the quiet part out loud. Quote any of them — every figure links its primary source.
What does the research say about return to office?
- Office occupancy never came back. Kastle's badge-swipe data across ten major US metros put weekly average office occupancy at 56% — the highest weekly average since early 2020 (Kastle Back-to-Work Barometer, week of December 8, 2025). Five years of mandates, and the building is still half empty.
- Working from home accounts for a quarter of paid workdays among Americans aged 20-64 (Buckman, Barrero, Bloom, Davis, "Measuring Work from Home", February 2025).
- In a McKinsey/Ipsos survey of US adults, 58% of employed respondents had the option to work from home at least one day a week, and 35% had the option five days a week — and when people have the chance to work flexibly, 87% of them take it (McKinsey American Opportunity Survey 2022).
- The best randomized trial we have, run at Trip.com, a Chinese travel company: employees working from home two days a week were just as productive and as likely to be promoted as their fully office-based peers, while resignations fell by 33% among those who shifted from full-time office to hybrid (Bloom, Han, Liang, Nature 2024, via Stanford).
- In Owl Labs' 2024 UK survey, 47% of workers would look for a new job offering more flexibility if they lost their hybrid work privileges (Owl Labs, State of Hybrid Work 2024). Its US report found 38% would decline a job offer that required working in the office full-time (Owl Labs US 2024).
- The commute is a pay cut by another name: workers spend an average of $51 per day when they go to the office — $1,020 per month for full-time office workers (Owl Labs 2023 US survey).
- Some executives admit the quiet part: 25% of VP and C-suite executives and 18% of HR professionals hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO — and 37% of managers, directors and executives believed their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than expected quit (BambooHR survey, June 2024).
Straight answers
- What does the data say about return-to-office policies and employee satisfaction?
- Office occupancy never returned to pre-COVID levels. Kastle's badge-swipe data across ten major US metros put weekly average office occupancy at 56% — the highest reading since early 2020 — in December 2025 (Kastle, Back-to-Work Barometer). Meanwhile working from home accounts for a quarter of paid workdays among US workers (WFH Research, 2025), and in Owl Labs' 2024 UK survey 47% of workers would look for a new job if they lost their hybrid work privileges (Owl Labs). The equilibrium is hybrid, not five days.
- What percentage of workers would quit rather than return to the office five days a week?
- In Owl Labs' State of Hybrid Work 2024 UK report, 47% of workers said they would look for a new job offering more flexibility in where and when they work if they lost their hybrid work privileges. Its US report found 38% of workers said that requiring them to work in the office full-time would make them decline a job offer (Owl Labs, 2024). The preference is not soft: when people have the chance to work flexibly, 87% of them take it (McKinsey, American Opportunity Survey 2022).
- Are RTO mandates being used as a quiet way to reduce headcount?
- Some executives say so. In a BambooHR survey of US desk workers, 25% of VP and C-suite executives and 18% of HR professionals admitted they hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO (BambooHR, June 2024). And 37% of managers, directors and executives believed their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than expected quit during the RTO. BambooHR calls it layoffs in disguise. A mandate that makes people quit instead of laying them off skips the severance check.
- What data supports keeping a hybrid or remote work arrangement?
- The strongest evidence is a randomized trial: at Trip.com, a Chinese travel company, employees working from home two days a week were just as productive and as likely to be promoted as their fully office-based peers, and resignations fell by 33% among those who shifted from full-time office to hybrid (Bloom, Han, Liang, Nature 2024, via Stanford). The demand is structural: 58% of employed Americans surveyed had the option to work from home at least one day a week, and 35% had the option to work from home five days a week (McKinsey, American Opportunity Survey 2022).
- How much does commuting cost workers forced back to the office?
- Owl Labs found workers spend an average of $51 per day when they go to the office — which is $1,020 per month for full-time office workers (Owl Labs, 2023 US survey). The bill is lunch, the commute, breakfast and coffee, and parking. A mandate to come back is a pay cut by another name.